


Blink Back the Tears and Try Again

by orphan_account



Category: Black Widow (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ballet, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clints a good bro, Gen, Hurt Natasha, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Natasha Romanov, Natasha Joins SHIELD, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha through the ages, Red Room, Sterilization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10058789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The once too hot air is too cold. She sees her home set a blaze and cocks her head to the side. The flames are red, the snow is red. Her brother bleeds red, the last thing she sees is red, and the first thing she sees when she is awake, it bold letters written in a red ink. The letters she can't read yet, but will soon be known as the Red Room.





	

Her legs ache from running and her toes are numb. She runs through the old door of her home in Russia.

Her mother nurses her younger brother by the warm fire.

She is 4 year old Natalia Romanov. Proud daughter to her father and mother. She learns ballet from a retired dancer from the Russia Ballet Company in exchange, little Natalia sweeps her one bedroom apartment up town. 

Her now faceless and nameless mother listens to her daughter's amusing tale.

"Madame Romanoff said my pile were good but I must work on my posture and then I helped her with her soup and then she told me about the US and a man called Captain America but he sounded kinda scary but she said not to worry and then-" 

A tight smiles passes her mother's face before she interrupts her dangerously chatty daughter.  
"Talia, can you go check to see if papa's home?"

The eager red hair rushes to the door and looks through the peep hole.

"He's not there Mama."

She races back to the other room to be near the fire. The flames rose up the chummy but the warmth blankets her back.

"Mama, I'm cold."  
"Sit by the fire then."  
"I am. Can't I sit with you and Boris, Mama?"  
"Boris is too little, you might hurt him."

She turn and the light glows on half of her body. A fleck of envy burns inside of her making her feel warm. In fact, the warm air heats to a sweat as light seems to burn her eyes.

Her mother pulls her suddenly ashy night gown and leads her away. She suddenly realize the fire edging closer to their feet. It bites and snarls like the rabid American hounds Madame Romanoff warned her of.

Suddenly, Boris squirms in her arms. His cries are loud but her heart pounding in her ears is louder. A slight boom from below makes the floor shake. 

Her eyes open and close trying to find another picture to look at than reality. Her faceless mother pushes her out the window. 

She hears the crush of the icy snow as it rang in her ear. She waits for Boris's merciless cries that used to wake her up at night. He is silence. In a dripping haze all she sees is red, red, red. 

She blinks innocently and looks at the starry sky. It's a satisfying deep blue. It seems like it's black, but she knows better. 

She smiles in a daze.

The once too hot air is too cold. She sees her home set a blaze and cocks her head to the side. The flames are red, the snow is red. Her brother bleeds red, the last thing she sees is red, and the first thing she sees when she is awake, it bold letters written in a red ink. The letters she can't read yet, but will soon be known as the Red Room. 

\-----------------------------------------

She is 8 now. Her pile are excellent and she's never fails. They take her to a room. Scowling eyes and long fingers point to a chair, she sits. A woman, another Madame, grins.

People don't smile there. They grin. They grin when you bled as if they take pleasure in red. 

This Madame, Madame B, is like her old teacher. She talks of horror in America. Instead of teaching her to armor herself with ballet shoes and a strong sense of courage, Madame B gives her a gun.

"It's heavy."  
"I know."  
"I don't know how to use it." 

Natalia is shot in her skinny arm. She looks older without her innocent baby fat. A 7 year that could pass as a short 10 year old. Natalia pales and cries out in pain.  
Another bullet, she screams. The next one and she bits her lip. She shakes and rocks in pain but doesn't screams. Her green eyes look at the grin people. She ties to mirror the arrogance expression but she can't. 

Her flesh is ripped and she can feel the blood drain and pulse out of her.

Bloody tear blur her vision but her feels the weight get placed in her hands. The gun is too heavy and the lights are too bright. But she obeys mindlessly.

She shoots and buckles under the kickback. Innocents drains from her like tears. Her once vibrant green eyes dull to a glassy pea green. It's the color of the soup she gets on Sundays. Soup only comes on Sundays.

Her legs and arm are stitched and she holds her shooting arm up for soup. A dirty cracked bowl with faded red paint. Lifeless and always red.

The cook has no name and barely any live left in her too. Her hair is grey and her eyes are dull too. Rumor says she was the previous Black Widow. She mumbles abut about a woman made of pegs and how America should never be trusted. Mirrored mottos of the Red Room.

"Alexis got closer to the bullseye so she got your portion of soup."  
The cook barely notices the anger in her eyes. Natalia's eyes water but she blinks tears back. She takes a gun and shoots Alexis. Her dull, dead eyes are bright again. Bright with anger and fear. A hunger not just her once a week pea soup, but for something else. She hates life. She announces that in the cafeteria and Madame B grins widely at the dead body. 

 

Natalia wakes up without a memory of Alexis or Boris or her mother. Faceless people with nameless action. She cries and the tear is slapped off. She's handed a gun and it seems like a second nature to fire it. A memory bits and snarls at her to get it right or else. 

She hates the kickback and sound. It's like a screaming baby. But the grin stuck of Madame B's face and the ability to shove her hatred for life keeps her warm at night.

 

One eye open, waiting for a fire or a hunger girl, she learns fast. 

She kills a girl with blood stained on her cheek. A lipstick kiss that drips. They don't make her forget this this. A sneak attack from an older girl. Too cocky and big. Natalia slips through and through before stabbing her. Silent and quick. 

Her breath quickens from the fright instead of the fight. She doesn't cry. Both sadness and pride fill her up. Bittersweet survival. Red.  
\-----------------------------------------

She's 13 now. And she is no one.

She leaned that red is the color of blood. Girls bleed when you snap their neck and girls bleed once a month.

She is the youngest there. She panics when she bled the first time.

"Anya, I think I dying." Her native tongue now float words with a practiced America accent.

She shows her the red blood. Anya looks around before turning her attention to her younger sister. It's still a game to them. Competition is still bloody it seems to end at the sparring mat. 

"Madame B can't know. You're not dying but...you don't want her to know." 

Anya's older blue eyes reflect pain, Natalia keeps quiet. 

She feels pain near her stomach but keeps quiet during Ballet. She thinks she at a Ballet school. She hasn't seen the sky in year, she wonder is blue will ever be that satisfying. The pain hits her again.

She's learned more since she was young. Feelings harden like stone and she becomes marble.

Madame B pulls her aside one day. Her muscle become tense with cold fear as she is led toward a medical bay.

The rooms don't smell like they've been soaked in bleach, they smell like rusty metal bars.

Madame B smirks as they strap her down.  
She doesn't speak. She's strapped to the table as they shell her away. 

The memories would one day be hazy and disoriented. Another red head girl would see the original tapes in her mind before playing them.

A doctor pokes at her parts and she goes red in the cheeks. Disappoint in herself, she tried to steady herself. She is a weapon, sex is her tools. 

She thinks he going to teach her in that. But he doesn't. Instead she screams that they pull her organs out. Pain is half the reason for doing it.

Madame B brushes her dry cheeks as Natalia suppresses a whimper. She grins as tell her she is no one. 

And she believes her.

She is sent on her on her first mission and sex was inevitable. She blushes and gushed at her prey. She's underage but heels and the right cleavage will do wonders. 

They tell her her body isn't her own. It's theirs. She kills Anya the next day. She was doing her a favor. 

Even when she's good, they hurt her. Her body aches and her mind pounds. She's been running but not like before. They leave her in the woods with five bullet and the other girls hot on her trail. She kills two and survives for a week. 

They bring her back. She's no longer hunger for others' death, she's ready for her own.

In the thick forest, she looks at the sky, its black. She can't tell the difference anymore.

Her eyes close in a vain attempt at sleep and her can hear Madame B's icy whisper.

"Love is for children Natalia."

She shoots 3 more girls.

\------------------------------------------

She was 18 when she the only one. They start injecting her with fake super serum. 

It chews her bones and rattles her nerves. They beat her until she is quiet. She shakes like she cold but her body's on fire. 

Her previous kills haunt her and she can't silence them. 

Her eyes are blank and her limbs are still but she is dying inside. An automatic smirk graces her face as they test her interrogation skills. 

She wishes for sleep to seep to her bone and comfort her. Empty bed with bloody chain are warmth to her.

"When people think they have neutralize you, they chain you. When they think you are too powerful, they chain you. Torture will try to take comfort away by chaining you. Here, chains will become your only comfort." Grin, grin, grin.

Madame B take away the chains. She doesn't sleep. Eyes wide open as she fails close them. She tries to remember everything they took away, but she can't. 

Instead, she runs about the halls firing her Glock to the tune of the Sugar Plum Fairy with her eyes finally closed.

She kills the cook among others. She smiles.

Punishment will come by day break. Her decision that came from ballet shoes and a strong sense of courage will eventually bleed out. Electricity will purge her of life and she will want to die. 

The sky will never ever be that satisfying again.

\------------------------------------------

 

She's 19 when he finds her. Insane and suicidal. She smirks at him, she never liked grins.

She's showered and fresh like a daisy, she doesn't believe in this comfort.

She waits in an office. Three people stare at her with a focused eye. They're trying to to read a closed book.

A man, Clint, smiles. She doesn't understand. She's impatient and old.

"Aren't you going to ask question?" She sounds raw from her week of pure silence in her cell.

"Nope." Another man, Coulson, says with another smile. She's down right scared but she's don't show it. A pure mask of glassy eyes and boredom.

"Aren't you going to kill me?"  
"I advocated for that but was outvoted." A man, equally as bored as her, says.

A scar that ran past both ends of his eye patch makes him just as unreadable. 

She trys to look out the window but the blinds are closed. She frowns slightly. Her sullen eyes are tired and dull. She's young but so old.

"Are you hunger?"  
"No." 

Inside she's starving, its been near a week since she had eaten anything besides the inside of her cheek.

"Thirsty?"  
"No." She saids with crackled lips and sunken eyes.

More frowning. Everyone's face was blurring together as she fought a headache. Fevered and tired she remains unmoved.

 

"Natalia."  
"Yes?"  
"You passed out."

She cocks her head to see that she was suddenly sideways. The office is gone and the hard chair isn't where she last saw it. The warmth of soft sheet surround her. She smells after shade and the countryside. Sleep still hasn't sunken into her bones.

Her hand rests handcuffed to the bedpost and an IV remains hooked to her fragile arm.

"What's this?" She looks at the various clear fluids bags that hung innocently in the corner. Panic floods her. The floor is too close and the bed too soft. She was a prisoner and murderer, not a guest.

"Calm down. It's just saline and a picc line."

Her unfocused eyes darted to the stocky figure talking. Clint.

She tried to get off the bed and into a real interrogation room but her limbs felt to heavy to move. Maybe this was the torture.

"I'm not telling you anything." She whispers low.  
"That's fine. Ok? We're not going to hurt you."  
"Lies." She spat back. Between her spotty vision and immobile limbs, she terrified of the non-interrogation.

People, too many people, had killed the good in her. Life is for the good, she is not good.

Pain is an act perfected by captors and inflicted on prisoner. She had been both too many times.

"You are underweight and dehydration. Just go back to sleep."  
"I don't need sleep. Or food or water."

She needs to sit with her mother because it's cold, wait, that's not right.

"Why?" He challenged.  
"Because it's a weakness." 

Just like children are weaknesses, wait, that's not right either.

"Everyone has weaknesses. We are not the KBG. You don't be fearful here."

She cries. Droplets of salty tears fall into the sheets like a fresh snowfall. Like the body of people she's killed.

He wipes them away before showing her the sky. It's not as black as she thought.  
\------------------------------------------

She's 28 when she's need in New York. 

Clint's her partner and he's been comprised. The roles reverse and he gets to see her pain. He knows better now.

Afterward, he hugs her. Whispered an apology.

"So I guess you know now." She asked with a shaky smile. "I guess you know what it's like to be unmade."

"Is that what it was like for you?"  
"Probably."

He doesn't describe it because she knows. It's like being held hostile in your own flesh. He wanted to die after she broke the spell. Good seemed bad and bad really seemed good.

He's found new respect for her. He see her the way her eyes still bled with suppressed tear now. 

He loves his wife and kids and extend his surplus family to her. She doesn't know what to do with love.

She cups it in her hands and it's warm. His hand clasp her shoulder like he's a proud older brother. She's afraid she'll drop it or most likely kill it. 

But he's not worried at all.


End file.
